A new and structrually unusual alkaloid, harringtonine,isolated from the plant Cephalotaxus harringtonia has been found to exhibit significant antitumor activity. Quantities of harringtonine do not seem to be available from natural sources and only limited information has been secured concerning the chemistry and pharmocology of the drug. A promising approach to obtain large quantities of harringtonine along with biologically interesting derivatives of it appears to be by total synthesis. Harringtonine is readily cleaved by hydrolysis into a ten carbon ester residue and a novel tetraacyclic alkaloidal component called cephalotaxine. The structures of these hydrolysis products and hence of harringtonine itself have recently been elucidate. The ester residue of harringtonine has been synthesized along with the alkaloidal component. An efficient synthesis of the alkaloid has yet to be developed. We herein propose a practical synthesisof cephalotaxine starting from readily available materials. The synthesis utilizes three high yield ring forming reactions developed in our laboratories. The synthetic scheme is designed to allow a wide number of structural variations to be introduced into the basic alkaloid skelton. In addition, it permits isotopic labeling of the drug at a number of positions, an advantage which should be of value in oncological studies.